**1. Introduction**

The global pandemic of COVID-19 has an impact on people of all age levels [1]. Similar to other countries, older adults are more likely to have a chronic illness [1]. Over the world reported that 66% of people aged 70 and over have at least one underlying condition that increased the risk of the severe impact of COVID-19 infection and its long sufferings [1].

The Ministry of Public Health (MOPH), the leader of the Department of Disease Control, nongovernmental organizations, and local organizations have an active role and follow the World Health Organization's (WHO's) eight pillars of COVID-19 response, which are a good guide for strengthening surveillance, case investigation, and the laboratory system, institutionalizing, the mechanism of coordination, and strengthening communication between stakeholders [1]. Medical pluralism (MP) is used for the treatment, prevention, and control of the COVID-19 pandemic in Thailand since 2019 [2–5].

The World Health Organization (WHO) acknowledges that Thailand shows significant progress on overall population health indicators, as seen in the relatively low COVID-19 cases number (less than one death per million population) and improving capacity for pandemic response [1]. WHO has recognized Thai Village Health Volunteers (VHVs) as "unsung heroes" who have made a great effort to fight COVID-19 [6]. The VHVs formulated "Socio-politics networks" or can be seen as a "Pluralistic network" based on a "collaborative system" between numerous agents/stakeholders in the community, including VHV groups, villagers, families/households level politicians' officials, and private sector actors [6, 7].

In the Northeast of Thailand, research and project produced by the staff of Mahasarakham University (MSU), Chaiyaphum Rajabhat University (CPRU), and Khon Kaen University (KKU) presented medical pluralism, development of herb medicine, health-seeking behaviors of older adults for treatment, prevention, and control of COVID-19 infection and its long sufferings [8–22].

This study aimed to synthesize knowledge about successful cases of pluralism medical treatment, prevention, and control of COVID-19 infection and its long sufferings among older adults.

#### **2. Objective**

The objective of this study was to synthesize knowledge about the successful pluralism of medical treatment, prevention, and control of COVID-19 infection and its long sufferings among the older population in the Northeast of Thailand from 2019 to 2022.

#### **3. Methodologies**

The study reviewed the results of the author's research and project in four steps as follows:

Step 1: Synthesize contents from the staff of Mahasarakham University (MSU), Chaiyaphum Rajabhat University (CPRU), and Khon Kaen University (KKU)'s research studies and projects from 1987 to 2022.

Step 2: Reported herbal medicine in pluralism medical treatment, prevention, and control of COVID-19 infection and its long COVID-19 sufferings.

*Pluralism Medical Treatment, Prevention, and Control of COVID-19 Infection… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.106339*

Step 3: Reported cases of success in treatment, prevention, and control of COVID-19 infected.

Step 4: Summarized the organization chart related to the pluralism medical treatment in the Northeast of Thailand.

The research review was approved by the Ethics Committee for Human Research at Mahasarakham University (MSU), Chaiyaphum Rajabhat University (CPRU), and Khon Kaen University (KKU) (HE591125).

Most of the research studies were based on secondary data. Those who volunteered had signed the consent form.

#### **4. Results**

There are four steps to this research result as follows:

*In step 1:* We reviewed research results of pluralism medical treatment, prevention, and control of COVID-19 Infection and its long sufferings among the older adults. This study was analyzed and found that since 1987 the staff of Mahasarakham University (MSU), Chaiyaphum Rajabhat University (CPRU), and Khon Kaen University (KKU)'s research studies and projects about the elderly, promotion of herbal medicine gave knowledge of working with COVID-19 outbreaks since 2019 to health personnel by academic conference [8–22], as summarized in **Tables 1** and **2**.

For older adults, these three universities had worked with this problem to prepare health personnel to face aging as advancement in medical technology has resulted in the Thai population having a longer life expectancy, leading Thailand to the "Aging Society". Such changes affect the quality of life of the elderly and the working-age population who are direct caregivers. Ministry of Public Health prepares to step into a quality elderly society. The policy to promote the health of the elderly in the issue of "Long-term care for the elderly" to create understanding and ability to implement the policy appropriately.

The health promotion policy "Long-term care for the elderly" uses an analysis through cultural sensitivity aspects. The formulation process was divided into the five stages of policy formation, namely: (1) Policy Agenda Setting, (2) Policy Formulation, (3) Policy Implementation, (4) Evaluation Stage Policy, and (5) Policy Implementation.

The results of the analysis revealed that: (1) the policy arose from two major currents, namely the mainstream and the policy stream; (2) it was the government's policy with cultural sensitivity due to the policy transformation, taking into account the classification of the elderly into three groups (the home group, the social group, and the bed group). The policy implementation strategy is open to each sub-district to be able to develop an innovative long-term care system that takes into account the local context, community potential, and social costs [21]. Besides this, Chaiyaphum Rajabhat University (CPRU)'s staff has the arrangement of teaching nursing student's computer-assisted instruction (CAI).

The computer-assisted instruction (CAI) was selected for gerontological nursing lessons on Depression, Dementia, Parkinson's, and Geriatric assessment. Thirty thirdyear nursing students of the Faculty of Nursing at Chaiyaphum Rajabhat University were attending the gerontological nursing course. The lessons on Depression, Dementia, Parkinson, and Geriatric assessment were taught via Tutorial Instruction Pattern. The constructed CAI efficiency was 87/84 with an E.I. value of 0.7, higher than the



*Pluralism Medical Treatment, Prevention, and Control of COVID-19 Infection… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.106339*



**Table 1.** *Summary of medical pluralism (MP) from MSU, CPRU, and KKU staffs' publications and presentations from 1987 to 2022.*

*I:*
